For Civil War Kinstonians, cider was choice libation

By Wes Wolfe / Staff Writer

Published: Sunday, March 30, 2014 at 09:25 PM.

In a time before refrigeration, one’s intoxicant of choice was dictated by the weather and abundant flora.

In Kinston during the Civil War, that meant fruit-based beverages – cider from apples, perry from pears and if you could make an alcoholic beverage from peaches, it would do as well. And if a blockade runner’s bounty of rum from the tropics made its way inland, then all the better.

Beginning April 1 and running through the inaugural Beer Weekend on April 5, the CSS Neuse Civil War Interpretive Center hosts an exhibit on local boozing habits called “Drinking During the Civil War.”

However, one thing that was generally lacking in Lenoir County 150 years ago was beer.

“The thing is, people didn’t drink beer like we know it nowadays in this part of the world,” said David Stone, a historical interpreter at the Neuse Center. “Lager beer, which is the majority of the stuff you get now, was only really made and consumed by German people, and most of that was in the central part of the country.”

The warm Southern weather was counterproductive to making a good brew, and there weren’t many people in North Carolina trying to make a go of it anyway.

“So, beer was not at all common,” Stone said. “Probably what made up the vast majority of what people drank at this day and time were ciders and maybe some homemade ales and beers that were homebrewed, but as far as beer production in North Carolina, awfully small.

In a time before refrigeration, one’s intoxicant of choice was dictated by the weather and abundant flora.

In Kinston during the Civil War, that meant fruit-based beverages – cider from apples, perry from pears and if you could make an alcoholic beverage from peaches, it would do as well. And if a blockade runner’s bounty of rum from the tropics made its way inland, then all the better.

Beginning April 1 and running through the inaugural Beer Weekend on April 5, the CSS Neuse Civil War Interpretive Center hosts an exhibit on local boozing habits called “Drinking During the Civil War.”

However, one thing that was generally lacking in Lenoir County 150 years ago was beer.

“The thing is, people didn’t drink beer like we know it nowadays in this part of the world,” said David Stone, a historical interpreter at the Neuse Center. “Lager beer, which is the majority of the stuff you get now, was only really made and consumed by German people, and most of that was in the central part of the country.”

The warm Southern weather was counterproductive to making a good brew, and there weren’t many people in North Carolina trying to make a go of it anyway.

“So, beer was not at all common,” Stone said. “Probably what made up the vast majority of what people drank at this day and time were ciders and maybe some homemade ales and beers that were homebrewed, but as far as beer production in North Carolina, awfully small.

“There were four people in the 1860 census that listed their occupation as brewers in the state, and two of them were Portuguese, and heaven knows what they were making.”

A Northern reporter, writing in the Nov. 17, 1862 edition of The New York Herald, sent back home a dispatch of his endeavors leaving Union-controlled New Bern and making his way to Kinston and Goldsboro, taking cover as the son of an area landowner who held – unbeknown to the general public – leanings toward the Union.

After making numerous derogatory comments about all in the area – white and black, male and female, free and slave, Irish and Germans found in Confederate gray – and noting women in town were “half crazy” for lack of snuff and resorted to chewing tobacco, the reporter passed judgment on Kinston’s intoxicants.

“I found plenty of liquor everywhere I went, yet a general lack of whiskey,” he wrote. “There was plenty of apple brandy (the “new dip,” as they call it) and peach brandy. To the new dip all hands appeared to be immoderately addicted.”

If the town’s denizens were then to get immoderately addicted, they would have to do so with their own bottles. Alcohol of all kind at the time was better known by the barrel, as bottles were expensive. As a result, people brought their own bottles to be refilled, many times by a liquid different than what originally occupied the vessel.

The Neuse Center’s exhibit will display a number of bottles from Kinston and from the CSS Neuse that were reused for multiple purposes.

“We’ve got a few beer steins that were loaned by a collector here in town, and the rest of the articles are either off of the ship or Civil War-era bottles and artifacts that are owned by various staff members, and we’ve also got some paperwork from a woman here in town who’s loaned us some receipts,” Stone said. “It’s all either locally owned artifacts from the community or things that came off the CSS Neuse.”

The Neuse Center is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday.

Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.